There is no doubt these are bad people. In a more self-confident society, they’d be interrogated, tried, and hanged within a month. But I do wonder if the two arrests involving FBI informants that also functioned as co-conspirators is the best use of FBI resources, as was the case of the Illinois and Dallas arrests. There are no doubt many hateful, anti-American Muslims within our borders. But many are lifelong seethers and trash-talkers who lack the resources, brainpower, and discipline to actually harm anyone. They’re as dangerous as “attempted murderers” who cast spells and poke voodoo dolls.

When the FBI builds and provides a bomb to someone like this, it may be propelling a person that is in practical terms a low threat into a resource-draining inmate. I may be wrong; the wherewithal and ability of the accused may be higher. It’s hard to tell from this vantage point. But one notable facts suggests they were just angry losers: in both Dallas and Illinois, the conspiracy and the provision of disarmed bombs involved the work of FBI agents and informants. We also know the FBI and all government agencies are fairly risk adverse. It’s not clear they would triage potential suspects based on likelihood of success. Let me be clear that I am only concerned about this as a matter of resource allocation; there is certainly no injustice or standing to complain on the part of the would-be Muslim terrorists themselves.

On the other hand, the New York arrests of Zazi shows a much more worrisome situation, where the accused terrorist was buying bomb-making supplies independently. I am glad that he and his confederates have been found out, before they could maim and kill. One wonders if we would have drawn lessons from their success. The El Al Airlines massacre in Los Angeles, the DC Sniper (involving a convert and immigrant), and the shoe bomber plot have all gone down the memory hole, as has the Lackawama Six. Foiled or failed efforts make little impression. Even the 9/11 attacks have been converted into a saccharine tragedy and time for national service as opposed to a wake up call that certain bad people believing a certain religion hate out guts.

Have we all been so brainwashed to forget that America was able to have limos driven and food served and other menial jobs perforemd before Muslim immigration began in the last two or three decades. It’s not like these are essential or particularly valuable residents. Their continued presence is a sign of national weakness and paralysis brought on by multiculturalist liberalism. No one thought, for example, that commitment to American values required large scale Japanese and German immigration during World War II. We knew then that saboteurs and double agents would exist in any such groups and that the risk of disloyalty and danger to national security was simply too high, even if some–perhaps a majority–of those coming would be peace-loving and loyal folks who did not like and did not fit in with the authoritarian regimes they were fleeing.

These arrests all reveal something missing from our strategic approach to terrorism. We continue to ignore the “formal cause” of Islamic Terrorism which is a belief in Islam. And recognizing this would make it plain that we need to (a) close our borders to Muslims, (b) remove all Muslims we can legally remove now, such as non-citizens, and (c) limit proselytizing activities of Muslims in American prisons, the military, and anywhere else where these groups can be limited But it’s simply anathema to the liberalism and the ersatz spirituality of guys like Bush and Obama to consider that the very content of someone else’s religion might be the problem and that the Muslim terrorists might be those who understand and act upon that religion in the most sincere way.

Concerned and looking for answers, I read a lot about Islam after 9/11. Like modern Christianity, it is a varied thing with various viewpoints. But some of those viewpoints are more persuasive, rooted in the text, and made with logical and historical rigor. I concluded the terrorists and extremists were acting on the basis of an understanding of Islam that rang the most true, that seemed to manifest its historical and textual spirit most sincerely. All of this is another way of saying that the best Muslims are the worst people, and our only hope for decency among them is the extent to which they disregard or modify their religion’s teachings.